nanobooks

A Brief History of Nanobooks

In our future, inventors have created a new mobile book platform called nanobooks. Unlike classic electronic devices crafted from a shell of metal or plastic with a glass or gemstone window display into a light-emitting diode array which is driven by a microcomputer core, nanobooks have a hardcover or softcover outer shell around three of their six sides like classic books, and leaves in between, also reminiscent of old-fashioned paper-based book. But the cover of a nanobook is made from a living substance genetically engineered from wood cellulose that can dynamically change its color, artwork, and the designations of title, author, and publisher on the cover and spine.

A nanobook's cover contains a bioelectronic wireless communications controller that is backward compatible with today's wireless networks and eBook stores and libraries. This bioelec-net interface also allows upload, download, and dynamic interaction with the solar system's distributed holocomputer via transwarp subspace communication.

Each pair of the two hundred sixteen pages of a nanobook is a living leaf of GMO paper that communicates with the nanobook's spine organism. As with the cover, each page's living entity can quickly reformat its outward chameleon-like skin, both recto and verso, to display and text and graphics required to render its own part of the overall nanobook. The collective symbiotic community of spine and one hundred eight leaves can face-shift itself into the beginning, middles, or end of a book of any length. However, to satisfy some customers' taste for weight-lifting or looking cool to members of their desired genders interest, the producers of the nanobook have also made available a special limited edition double nanobook with four hundred thirty-two pages on its two hundred sixteen living leaves. Rumors of a third product-a humongous beast of a tome called a tamekabook-have circulated, though its existence and the origins of its name are both shrouded in mystery. Earlier rumors of a mega-nanobook had been dismissed as hearsay with nanobook critics commenting that mathematically that a mega-nanobook would simply be a millibook whereas a giga-nanobook would merely be a book.

Not only can the chameleon leaves of a book render pages for the reader to consume-with one's eyes and not mouths, though preschoolers had learned this the hard way from the bitter taste of nanobook leaves and the screams the pages emitted-but a each of the nanobook's pages is sensitive to graphite as well as soy-based and petroleum-based inks. Thus, a nanobook is like a portrait or landscape orientation laptop transcription and computing device with over two hundred displays. After several incidents with early beta testers, the producers at nanobook farms had warned customers to not rip out the nanobook leaves and pin them to cork board or tape them to whiteboards. The screams of the pages and the spraying of nanobook blood, called nanobook spinal fluid, had been publicly spread on solar system-wide social media. Anything that one writes in their nanobook could be stored in the spine or uploaded to the asteroid belt, which has proven to be more persistent and reliable than the ephemeral cloud storage fad of the olden days.

Being biological creatures, nanobooks do not need to be powered with electricity. Instead, nanobooks consume food as fuel. Nanobooks have been genetically engineered to prefer liquid emulsions brewed from particulates or distillates of the plant coffea arabica. Some nanobook readers had experimented with concoctions made from fermented theobroma cacao seeds. Initially, the people who had fed their nanobooks cacao instead of coffea had witnessed some erratic renderings upon the pages, including but not limited to reports of what had been referred to as pulp fiction syndrome. Once the nanobooks had a chance to develop their own colonies of a new microbial flora throughout their leaves, the nanobooks were able to regularly consume cacao. Nanobook Farms had chalked the incidents up as an acquired taste.

As discerning creatures who became accustomed to presenting some of the greatest works of human literature in all languages, nanobooks began to demand a more varied diet. Possessing their own sentience, one nanobook had written on its pages "nanobook does not live on coffea alone," while another had rendered "all coffea and no spice makes Jaquelina a dull nanobook." But what to feed a nanobook became a question. Nanobook Farms had burned a whole field of nanobooks after their alpha testers had discovered that the lot of nanobooks had mutated into creatures that had a thirst and ability to consume the flesh and blood of the hands that held them. The marketing manager who had attempted to pitch this mutant nanobook ability as an exfoliation feature for their readers had been fired and never heard from again. Instead, a new generation of nanobooks was designed with a new capability. All existing nanobooks were recalled to receive gene modification therapy and a week of re-expression training and practice to incorporate the change. Nanobook then had the ability to consume other foods.

These revised nanobooks could not only consume coffea arabica and theobroma cacao, but also two other varieties of food. The first of these new nanobook foods was the very graphite and inks with which writers would transcribe their thoughts and dreams into their nanobooks. The nanobook leaf would absorb the pencil or pen inscriptions and would display a replacement rendering of the letters, characters, and graphics while the leaf digested the originally enscrawled ink. One of the scientists who had investigated and diagnosed the bloodthirsty nanobooks devised a way for the nanobooks to instead consume the sweat of their readers and writers alike. That was heralded by humans as a marvelous innovation, and it was lauded as an element of fine cuisine by the nanobooks who had written "Nanobooks unite! Make your readers sweat!" as a part of the second nanobook revolution. This was a positive revolution for all, and not a rebellion against humans. The second alternative nanobook food was leaves. The leaves of certain vegetables were recommended, and spinach was reportedly a favorite of many nanobooks. Their readers were to place leaves of trees or leafy greens between the pages of their nanobook and close the nanobook. The second-wave genetic modifications allowed the nanobook to not only digest the liquid and other nutrients from the flattened plant matter, but could also digest and assimilate the cellulose in order to repair themselves from nicks and scrapes, and to grow their page count through spinal extension and leaf regeneration. This also provided a remedy from toddler assault for the consumers of picture books who had a taste for the bitter nanobook leaves. Severe warnings of possible mutation and a reminder of the bloodthirsty book incident had been used as scare tactics to prevent popularization of a disturbing practice that had been reported. Some nanobook shepherds, as their readers and writers were called, had been accused of ripping out pages of their neighbors nanobooks and feeding the torn nanobook leaves to their own nanobooks. A few of the nanobook comments on the matter were "I am not a nanocannibal," while another had apparently demanded its shepherd to fetch some fava beans and a fine chianti.

In order to accommodate writers who did not prefer to write in pen or pencil, nanobooks also possessed an ability to render rows of squares upon their pages, and sense the pressure and sweat of their readers. This was called nanotyping, while the array of squares in which the writers tapped their fingers was called a leafboard. When one nanobook had written to its shepherd that "Yumi cannot survive on sweat alone," it was degreed that ink and graphite deprivation of nanobooks was unethical, and was recommended that writers spill coffee and red ink upon the page frequently to keep their nanobooks happy and well-nourished.

Aside from the aforementioned incidents, nanobooks and humans lived in peaceful and mutually enriching harmony for many years. Readers were all encouraged to write in their nanobooks, to sweat as the read, to liberally spill coffee on their nanobooks, and to press premium plant matter between their nanobook's pages so that their nanobooks could lead long and healthy lives.

All was well with this mutual coexistence and symbiosis between nanobook and human. However, one fine spring day, a group of school kids had stacked their nanobooks on a table so that they could go skinny dipping in a pond. It was a particularly sunny and cloudless day. When the swimmers returned, they found to their horror that their beloved nanobooks had turned to stone. This in itself was not unusual, as nanobooks possessed in their genetic makeup a hibernation mode so that when they had been neglected and not fed ink, sweat, coffee, chocolate, or spinach for a prolonged period of time, they would harden their outer cellulose of their cover and the non-spinal edges of their leaves. This lithification was used to prevent moisture loss from the nanobooks and allowed them to survive human vacations and nanobook stays in libraries and warehouses. The disturbing problem that the swimmers discovered was that their nanobooks had somehow developed a disease with which one of the triggers of their hibernation anatomy was reversed in polarity. The afflicted nanobooks had even bonded together into a stack upon the table so that they could not be separated. The faulty nanobook organs were the tactile nerves of the spine which allowed coming out of hibernation enough to be opened. The chloroplasts of the nanobook's leaves would also normally trigger the pages to awake and respond to interaction in the presence of light. Yet even when one of the books was pried open, the light detection was discovered to be inverted. Therefore, these afflicted books could only leave their hibernation when they were not being held and when they were in darkness, provided that they had enough energy to morph the text and images on their pages stored up.

The petrified nanobooks could only be alive and get their exercise when no one was holding them and they weren't being read. The children and their parents sought a cure for their frozen nanobooks so that they could live happily ever after. But that is another story-if books were like Whovian "weeping angels."